


been waiting so long for you to come my way

by perennial



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, soulmates hear bells the first time they see each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 10:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: The bells start ringing without warning, startling Sirius so much that he drops his sledgehammer.There’s no doubt it’s her. She’s looking right at him when the bells go off, and she looks as startled as he does.1940s soulmate AU.





	been waiting so long for you to come my way

**Author's Note:**

> [{kelly clarkson}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1wlmTNERqE)

The bells start ringing without warning, startling Sirius so much that he drops his sledgehammer.

There’s no doubt it’s her. She’s looking right at him when the bells go off, and she looks as startled as he does.

The shipyard is in the middle of peak work hours, and the workers are busy hauling lumber and machinery through the yard, blocking his view of the entry gate where she stands. The summer sun beats down on the gravel; if not for his deep tan, which he has been cultivating all season long for this purpose, his chest and arms would be painfully red. A breeze cools the sweat in the hair tied back at his neck and makes her dress flutter around her knees. Her hat shades her eyes, but even from this distance he can tell she is staring at him.

He hardly has time to register what’s happening before a Lincoln convertible drives up behind her. Two men are in the front seat; the pale-haired driver wears a gray suit with matching fedora and hangs a hand holding a burning cigarette over the door. He calls something and she turns, her movements disoriented. She looks at Sirius again before she walks to the car; then she slides into the backseat and closes the door, giving him an excellent view of the massive diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand.

-

She comes back that afternoon. He intentionally works on the interior of a ship frame in order to stay out of sight, which turns out to be an easy task since all she does is sit on the edge of the loading dock, watching and sometimes chatting with the passerby. She doesn’t leave her post for an hour.

Finally he is more fed up with the wait than she is. He pulls his shirt back on and tugs his suspenders into place and goes down to the yard with a load of surplus lumber.

She’s wearing shoes that have straps across the bridges of her feet, which she’s crossed at the ankles. Her hands are folded in her lap. A shining lock of brown hair falls in her eyes.

She’s looking the other way as he approaches, and the afternoon sun is at an angle to make one squint. He stops a few feet away from her. “Looking for someone?”

She looks up at him and stands slowly.

“Hello,” she says. “My name is H—”

He cuts her off. “Eh, no, don’t. Let’s not bother with names.” He adjusts the planks balanced on his shoulder, starts walking past her. Says over his shoulder, “Matter of fact, let’s not bother with any of it, alright? You go back to your life, I’ll stick with mine.”

She looks bewildered. “But we’re soulmates.”

“Doesn’t appear to have stopped you.” He nods to her diamond.

“That’s a long story, one I’d like to tell you, if you would just—slow down—and talk to me!”

“I’ll pass.” The last thing he wants to listen to are a bunch of excuses about how she just couldn’t help herself, they just fell in love.

“But—” She has to take two steps for every one of his. “Aren’t you curious about me? I want to know everything about you.”

“I know everything I need or want to know.”

“But we’ve _found_ each other!”

He stops and turns around to look her straight in the eyes. “Listen, sweetheart. I don’t know what you’re expecting. To have your cake and eat it too? Get to have both the man you chose and the man you have this… connection with? Nah, no thanks. Not from me.”

Fire enters her eyes; he’s irritated at how attractive he finds it. “You don’t know anything about me or what I chose or what I want or what I’m expecting. Just because you’ve got a chip on your shoulder over something that wasn’t my fault—”

“Judas Priest, listen, I don’t care, alright? Will you drop it and leave?”

“You’re angry.”

“I’m fine.” He’s furious. All this time he’s been waiting for her, and in the meantime she’s gone and found someone else. “You’re hardly the first person to marry someone who isn’t your soulmate. Go be happy. What do I care?”

“I don’t want to marry him!”

He rounds on her. “Then what,” he almost shouts, “is that?”

She shouts back, “ _That_ was a trick!” She must not give in to outbursts often; he watches her try to collect herself before she speaks again. “He played a recording. I heard the bells, _heard_ them, with my ears. Not in my head.” She hesitates. “You heard them in your head, right?”

She suddenly looks so uncertain he feels just sorry enough for her to say, “Yeah. I heard them in my head.” Their own unique tune, the one he’s been told about his whole life until he’s come to hate the phrase ‘you’ll know when you hear it’. It’s been stuck in his head ever since he saw her. He quietly hums a few notes as proof. The look of relief on her face convinces him as to the truth of her story, not that he’s about to tell her so.

“I don’t love him. I don’t even like him. I was going to marry him because I thought he was my soulmate, I figured it would eventually all work out. But it turns out he’s just a lying bastard who’s after my money.”

“You’re rich? Now we’re talking.” He turns and strides away from her.

Her footsteps follow. “What are you doing? Why are you still leaving? I just said—”

“I know what you just said. Golddigger’s got you in his sights. Not my problem.”

She sounds mad. “Now you’re just being belligerent for no reason other than the fact that you’ve been sour this whole conversation, and you wouldn’t know how to take an out when it’s served to you on a silver platter.”

He drops the lumber on the pile and picks up a shovel. “Think you know me, do you?” She’s right. Dammit.

“I don’t want him. I’ve wanted you since the instant I saw you and don’t try to tell me you don’t want me just as much because I won’t believe it for a second. We both heard those bells. We are _soulmates_.”

“What do you figure, then? We’re going to buy a house and fill it up with a dog and some kids? And you’ll do whatever independently wealthy women do during the day and I’ll keep working my way up the ladder here and every so often we’ll go to the seaside?”

“Sounds lovely.”

He says, “Going to be hard to do all that while you’re wearing another man’s ring.”

She immediately removes her diamond and holds it out to him. When he doesn’t take it she frowns at him and drops it into her skirt pocket. Everything about the gesture does wonders for his temper. He feels like a red-hot poker that’s been dropped in water.

He leans on his shovel, studying her. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were proposing.”

“I’d elope with you right now if you’d stop being so stubborn.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You’re that sure?”

“We both know where this is going; it’s just a matter of time. And I’ve always liked getting a head start on my work.”

He can’t help laughing, though he resents being called work and tells her so.

“You are work,” she informs him. “And I wouldn’t want anything that’s too easy, and you don’t want someone who isn’t willing to put in the time required. Right?”

She’s right, though he isn’t ready to admit it.

“I’m right,” she says. “We suit each other.”

A snarky response is ready at the back of his throat, but the fact of the matter is that he is quickly realizing that every last one of his highest hopes is standing right in front of him, looking at him with warm brown eyes that he has little to no interest in looking away from. So instead he says, “You have no idea how much.”

Her eyes open wide enough for hope to steal in. She bites her lip and grins. “So you like me, then?”

“Yeah. I like you.”

“I like you too.” She smiles wider. “And I think you’re very handsome and I like that you’re strong.” Her eyes dance and her expression is playful but her cheeks are stained red.

“I think you’re beautiful,” he tells her, “and I like that you’re rich.”

She snorts. “What do you need my money for? You have plenty of your own. Yes, I know exactly who you are, Sirius Black.” And so he gets his second shock of the day.

He drops the shovel and grasps her arm. “Well, keep your voice down because no one else here does.” He looks around to make sure no one has heard her. “How do you know who I am?”

“I couldn’t find you after I saw you this morning so I asked around. Got your name from the clerk at the front desk. He was very helpful, gave me your address too. I went to your house—it’s charming by the way, I’ve always liked cottages. Your mail, _Mr. Padfoot_ , is addressed to Sirius Black.”

He looks at her incredulously.

“Not to mention you’re the spitting image of your father, whose portrait is hanging right there over the clerk’s desk. Are you really telling me no one but me has put two and two together?”

“Exactly. And don’t you tell anyone, I don’t want them to start figuring it out now. They trust me.”

“So you’re incognito until… when? You’re made a shipmaster?”

“Until I’ve earned my place with my own two hands, not my tainted inheritance.” He looks into the clear brown eyes that are looking patiently back at him. “I’m sorry to have to make you a Black.”

“You think I care about your family legacy?” She takes his hand in her warm one. “The only Black left is you. The name is ours now; it means what we make it mean. We can be whoever we want to be. Also, are you saying you’ve agreed to elope with me?”

“No. Call me old-fashioned but I’ve always liked the idea of being in love with the woman I marry.”

She smiles. “We can elope later. Unless you want all the fanfare.”

“I’m happy to do without it.”

“Likewise. Shall we pencil it in for four months time, then? Five, perhaps?”

“Optimist, are you? No, two should do it.” Even less than that if he’s honest, but he has a feeling that despite all her fondness for planning, this is the sort of surprise she will like.

A screech of tires pulls their attention to the yard entrance. A pale-haired man in a towering temper jumps out of the Lincoln. Sirius is about to lose one of his top investors; he finds he doesn’t care. What he does mind is the fact that one small warm hand has just slid out of his grasp.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to get rid of him.”

“I can help with that,” he says, and pulls her to him.

He cups her jaw in both hands and brings his mouth to hers, ignoring the immediate chorus of catcalls and whistles from the half-constructed ship behind them. She haphazardly throws her engagement ring across the gravel, then slides her arms around his waist and kisses him back, warm and sweet as honey. The Lincoln departs in a squeal of rubber. The afternoon sun drops low enough to douse everything in tangerine gold.

After a while he says, “If you’re going to smile while I kiss you, it rather defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”

“Sorry.” She beams up at him. “It’s just turned into the strangest, loveliest day.” She runs her fingers lightly along his hairline. “I have so many questions for you.”

“Me first.” He leans back to look at her. “What—”

“Volunteer work at the hospital, committee work for four societies concerned with social injustices, oversight of a women’s shelter. And a soup kitchen.”

To his blank look, she says: “It’s what some women of independent fortune do all day.”

“I see. I look forward to hearing more. Not my first question, however.”

“Oh. What’s that, then?”

He copies her, running his thumb along the edge of her cheekbone. “What’s your name?”

Her laughter rings out over the yard.


End file.
